Evergreen State College: $50,000 in travel funds missing

An audit at The Evergreen State College revealed that a professor with a study-abroad program to Chile hasn't accounted for at least $50,000 in student fees and other college money, and that he misrepresented the college by signing contracts with a Chilean company partly owned by his family.

Evergreen investigated professor Jorge Gilbert's academic travel program to Chile for about 10 months and released its findings Tuesday.

Gilbert, who has taught at Evergreen since 1988, teaches courses related to Latin American studies, international studies and political economy, according to his faculty Web site. He also is an honorary consul of Chile.

The college has forwarded the information from the audit to campus police, the Thurston County Prosecutor's Office and the college's human resources department for review.

"What's important is for the process to take place, so there's a thorough and fair process," said Rich Wood, spokesman for the Washington Education Association. United Faculty of Evergreen, the faculty union, is affiliated with the teachers union.

A representative of United Faculty of Evergreen is assisting Gilbert with the human resources investigation, Wood said.

A person who answered the phone for the local Chilean consulate said Gilbert was out of town and could not be reached. Gilbert did not respond to a message left at his Evergreen office.

Evergreen internal auditor Maryam Jacobs listed several "concerns and exceptions" in her report, including:

• The audit could not find expenses or disbursements to support at least $50,000 in travel payments from students and the college that Gilbert has collected in the past four years.

• Gilbert entered into contracts on behalf of the college with a company owned by his family members, which "may have violated the Washington State Ethics in Public Service law."

• Gilbert bypassed the college systems pertaining to cash handling by having students submit the money for the program to a bank account, for which he was the sole signer.

• Gilbert misrepresented the number of students interested in the program, which would have affected whether the program was approved.

• Gilbert couldn't provide adequate documentation of the expenditures incurred as part of academic travel or the fees charged to students.

Jacobs finished gathering information in November, and officials spent the past two months preparing the report and how to respond to it.

Missing tickets

Several students and parents contacted the college in April saying that they hadn't received plane tickets to Chile that Gilbert purchased from a Bellevue travel agency, according to Jacobs' report and to documents disclosed under a public-information request. That prompted the investigation of a possible violation of the college's cash-handling policy, Jacobs said.

The college has filed a police report in Olympia against the travel agency in connection with the missing tickets.

According to e-mails exchanged between college officials and Gilbert, the professor bought the tickets from the agency using money that his students deposited into a non-college bank account. The college officials told him in an e-mail that was a possible violation of the college's cash-handling policy.

Soon-to-be Evergreen graduate Rebecca Moorman, whose focus was Latin American studies, went to Chile as part of the program last spring. The trip cost each student about $3,000, not including the normal quarterly tuition. She said the study-abroad payments were deposited in an account at West Coast Bank.

Moorman said that she became concerned when she hadn't received her plane tickets to Chile. She said she was able to get her tickets, and the tickets of three other students, after going to the travel agency's office in Bellevue and sitting in the office until tickets were provided.

Moorman also raised questions after she asked Gilbert for an itemized account of the expenses of the Chile program and received a one-page invoice with few details.

"I really cared when I looked at the receipt like my dad would, and I thought, 'He's not going to buy this at all,"' she said.

Jacobs, the college internal auditor, said that she now is reviewing other study-abroad programs in the college's international programs and services department.

Last year, 345 students participated in those programs, college spokesman Todd Sprague said. Six of the study-abroad programs are run by the college and 17 are done in partnership with other institutions or organizations, and students can arrange for independent study or internships abroad, he said.

Gilbert's yearlong program was canceled before school started in the fall, according to college documents, but he is teaching individual students this quarter, Sprague said.